This new variety of lily plant originated as a seedling which first flowered at Sandy, Oreg., in 1970, the mother plant for this seedling having resulted from my crossing, at Sandy, Oreg., a clonal selection from the `Pink Glory` strain with a plant selected from the species Lilium nobilissum as the pollen plant; this crossing having been done with the object of producing large flowered, upright and semi-upright Oriental hybrids in the shades of soft pink and white suited to forcing into flower out-of-season, an accomplishment heretofore unknown in the lily breeding art. The crossing of these distinctively related parent plants was successfully accomplished in greenhouse where the temperatures were maintained extremely high for at least one week after pollination. This distinctive pure white seedling was asexually reproduced by me and under my direction at Sandy, Oreg., with completely satisfactory results and successive generating produced by natural propagation from bulblets, by bulb scale propagation and by tissue culturing from bulb scale explants, have demonstrated that the novel and distinctive characteristics of this new lily variety hold true under asexual propagation from generation to generation and appear to be firmly fixed. This new Oriental lily hybrid with the upright to semi-upright orientation of its extremely large sized and broad tepalled "bowl-shaped" flowers and its completely unspotted pure white coloration is a combination unique among Oriental hybrid lilies. The plant possesses unusually strong, stout stems, and exceptionally broad leaves; and additionally, the clone possesses to a high degree the desirable characteristics of hybrid vigor, great hardiness, and disease resistance, as well as excellence of form, color, and habit as observed at Sandy, Oreg.
We have found this new variety to be well suited to forcing out-of-season when the bulbs are dug at the appropriate time and properly precooled. Bulbs dug in late October and properly precooled and potted in January will flower under glass in western Oregon in an average of one hundred to one hundred fifteen days with no supplementary lighting and at moderate greenhouse temperatures.